


Déjà vu

by kesomon



Category: Quantum Leap
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Sickness, Vertigo - Freeform, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-14
Updated: 2015-11-14
Packaged: 2018-05-01 13:00:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5206832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kesomon/pseuds/kesomon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam leaps - and leaps - and leaps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Déjà vu

**Author's Note:**

> TW for character being physically sick to his stomach, for my fellow Emetophobics.
> 
> Plot idea: what if a moment of Déjà vu, the kind that makes you pause, is the moment a leaper touches your life for a split second? And how would these mini-leaps affect the one who was leaping? tldr; Sam is not having a very good day.

The familiar tingle spreads through Sam’s limbs, even as the friends of the body he inhabits slapped him on the back, laughter and praise filling his last moments in the life of the man he’d become. He grins back, an old mix of satisfaction for a job well done and the melencholy of leaving the smallest taste of normalcy behind. Such was his life, now, never a moment’s rest. He closes his eyes as the tingle grows, buzzing through his chest, creeping upwards to his head until his world is swallowed in light and he- 

He leaps- 

He leaps- 

He _leaps_ \- 

The world skips around him, flashes of lives, and Sam barely has a chance to blink before he- 

He leaps- 

He leaps- 

He _leaps_ \- 

A man pauses a step before crossing the street, puzzled, and a car blows a red light. 

He _leaps_ \- 

A woman shivers, hesitates with the faintest sense of alarm, and decides not to take the path where the mugger lies in wait. 

He _leaps_ \- 

An engineer frowns, struck by the notion he’s forgotten something. He double-checks the readings on his instruments, avoiding an electrical fire three months later for his diligence. 

He _leaps_ \- 

A co-ed trips briefly, a moment of vertigo, and a stranger grabs her arm, preventing a slip-and-fall into a nearby fountain. Their eyes meet and they laugh, circumstance forging the first link of romance. Sam- 

Sam leaps- 

He leaps- 

He _leaps-_

He bends double, sick in the petunias. Worried voices surround him, female, a hand soothing on his back, “ _Sharon! Oh my god, are you all right? Maybe we shouldn’t go out tonight._ ” He opens his mouth to respond, or perhaps to be sick again, and- 

_He leaps._

“Sam. SAM. Sam, come on, speak to me-” 

“Al,” he croaks, head spinning. The taste of bile vanished with his last leap, but he’s still nauseous. Flat on his back, fingers clutching at plush carpet as though gravity could fail at any moment. He shuts his eyes, closing out the way the stucco ceiling warps and rolls like a frothy ocean shore. 

“Thank God, Sam, you had me worried to death!” The incoporeal presence of his friend hovers on the edge of Sam’s perception, an awareness of what isn’t actually there. In his mind, he can picture the admiral crouched at his side, hands fluttering over Sam with the instinct to touch, to help, unable to do anything but watch Sam suffer alone. 

“What…” 

“I’m sorry, Sam,” Al sounds guilty. Sam risks an glimpse; concern is etched deeply in the lines on his friend’s face. “We tried that new retrieval program - it, eh, went a little ca-ca.” 

“Again?” Sam jokes weakly. The room is slowing down. He releases his death-grip on the carpet, tries rolling over, and fights another wave of nausea with the motion. Not quite there yet. 

“We _lost_ you, Sam,” Al presses, “for almost a _week_. You - your body, back at the project, you started seizing. The tracking algorithms failed completely. Ziggy was blowing her circuits trying to get a lock on you again.” 

“I was...” he swallows. Remembers flashes, split-moments of time, slight differences changing history. A butterfly flaps its wings; a man leaps through a hundred lives in an instant... “I think...skipping stones...Al, you ever have _déjà vu_?” 

Al frets with a puzzled expression, the look on his face worried that Sam’s maybe misplaced a few marbles. Sam can’t find the words to elaborate, his head pounding, thoughts disjointed, his sense of self stuck in a blender on _frappé_. He sighs, shudders, eyes closing, pressing his forehead into the carpet. “‘m...tired, Al. Need to...” 

“No, not on the floor, Sam. At least try to make it to the bed.” Al gives a sigh. The handlink gives a familiar trill. “Good news, at least: there’s nothing here that can’t wait till morning.” Sam feels a curious sensation of cold on his shoulder, his mind’s effort at processing the brush of an intangible hand over his back. 

The effort to drag himself to his knees is too much, the bed an insurmountable distance. Sam tucks his arm under his head, instead, surrendering to his leap-exhaustion. The chill brushes over his shoulders again, as he drifts into the black. 

“Sleep well, Sam,” Al murmurs. “You’ll be all right. You’ll be all right.” 

He sleeps.


End file.
